Judiciary damaged by unqualified nominees

As a state senator representing the people of Nevada’s 11th Senate District, I understand the importance of community. I was born and raised in Nevada, and I am a product of the Clark County School District and a public interest lawyer who cares deeply about the integrity of the judiciary.

Throughout Nevada’s history, most of our judges have had a longstanding presence in our community.

But that is not the case for Lawrence VanDyke, President Donald Trump’s most recent pick for the Nevada seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Trump chose to pass over a large number of qualified nominees who live and work in Nevada in order to nominate VanDyke, who has few ties to the state.

VanDyke does not live in or own property in Nevada. He does not send his children to school in the state. And he did not even bother to take the Nevada Bar Exam until he was required to take it. In fact, VanDyke’s only connection to the state is that he was invited to work in the attorney general’s office at the behest of former Attorney General Adam Laxalt.

To make matters worse, VanDyke has also been rated by the American Bar Association — the organization that has evaluated federal judicial nominees for every administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the sole exception of George W. Bush — as “Not Qualified.” The ABA’s report, based on 60 interviews with fellow lawyers and judges, excoriated VanDyke as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” Most notably, the report said that concerns had been raised by his peers about his inability to be fair to LGBTQ litigants and “that he would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to members of the LGBTQ community.”

Unsurprisingly, this assessment tracks his career.  In an op-ed he wrote as a student at Harvard Law School, VanDyke argued that same-sex marriages “hurt families and consequentially children and society.” When asked during his Senate Judiciary hearing whether he still believes this to be the case, VanDyke would not respond to the question other than to say that his personal views would not affect his role as a judge.

But it is clear that his views of LGBTQ people have not changed. While serving as the Montana solicitor general, VanDyke pleaded with his colleagues in 2013 to join an amicus brief supporting a business seeking to discriminate against LGBTQ people, because in VanDyke’s words, “this case is important to establish that gay rights cannot always trump religious liberty.”

It is clear why Nevada’s U.S. senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, are opposing VanDyke’s nomination.

Yet their ability to stop this dangerous nominee has been neutralized by Senate Republicans — who, in their frenzy to pack the courts with ultraconservatives, have abandoned a 100-year-old procedural safeguard that allowed a nominee’s home-state senators to put a hold on the nomination, a reasonable check on the president’s ability to push through anyone he or she chooses.

Senate Republicans have abdicated their constitutional duty to provide meaningful oversight over Trump’s judicial nominations, and the results are predictable and devastating.

VanDyke is just one example of the hundreds of lifetime appointments that will haunt our federal judiciary for generations.

Unless a handful of Republican senators decide to stand up to Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we can all look forward to a future of ideologically driven federal judges with few ties to their state — in a race to the bottom that won’t end until our courts are filled with “unqualified” men like VanDyke.

Dallas Harris represents the 11th Senate District in the Nevada state Senate and serves on the board of advisers for Silver State Equality, Nevada’s statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization.